


Before You Die

by Warp5Complex_Archivist



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-04
Updated: 2006-03-04
Packaged: 2018-08-15 22:47:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8075881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Warp5Complex_Archivist/pseuds/Warp5Complex_Archivist
Summary: Daniels learns something from the crew. (02/24/2004)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Kylie Lee, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Warp 5 Complex](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Warp_5_Complex), the software of which ceased to be maintained and created a security hazard. To make future maintenance and archive growth easier, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but I may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Warp 5 Complex collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Warp5Complex).

  
Author's notes: his is a bit weird, but it's my take on the future and Temporal Cold War.  


* * *

Past. Present. Future. The three swirled together, separating, reforming, melding into new patterns, never staying the same. They were interchangeable, never static, and a past did no more guarantee a future than a future did a past. The past and future became unimportant, and the present was the only thing that mattered, because the present could be the future or the past.

It was from this view of time that Daniels stepped aboard the first of what he alone knew to be a long line of starships named _Enterprise_.

Birth. Life. Death. They followed no linear order, because he was born while he died, lived after he died, died centuries before he was born. Life alone mattered, and so he lived before he was born and after he died. It was not immortality, it was not eternity, it was technology. He did not fear death, because it was not final.

In this way, Daniels though, humans had done what nothing else could. By removing a fear of death, and its sense of, at the very least _worldly_ finality, they had managed to make themselves less than human.

When he watched the crew of the first _Enterprise_ , he was surprised to find that he was jealous. They had only one chance in life to accomplish what they set out to do, they could not change the past to suit them and knew nothing of what the future held, and yet in their simplicity they had a nobility that he had not seen in his time of origin. Their sense of purpose was defined, their lives marked by long-held traditional rites, and they gave life more meaning than he had thought possible.

They used to say, when death meant something, when time was linear, that you always had a great revelation before you died.


End file.
